Actually, I don’t know if they’re hypocritical so much as clueless, but the result is the same: yet another deep, meaningful campaign in which a bunch of vapid airheads go in front of a camera and repeat slogans over and over, hoping to brainwash you into submission, like a bunch of zombies.

This time, however, someone took that video and remixed it with interesting results:

So, celebs, does your plan include your own movies? Shouldn’t we be talking about the 1st amendment, as well as the second? Don’t your films promote the dread “gun culture” and glorify violence? If we’re going to restrict Americans’ rights to self-defense in the name of public safety, shouldn’t your films be subject to censorship for the same reason?

Or maybe, just maybe, the problem lies with the person, not the tool or the medium.

But that’s probably too difficult for for a bunch of zombies to understand.

Never let reality get in the way of a good fantasy, eh? (1) In the wake of a series of mass-murders this year, Diane Feinstein (D-CA) wants to ban the traffic and manufacture of vaguely defined military-style weapons. And yet the facts from her own state seem to show that increased gun ownership is one factor in a decline in crime:

Gun sales up, injuries down

The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which records each time someone buys a gun, showed that background checks hit a record high of 16.5 million in 2011. Gun sales have been steadily on the rise.

A recent report (PDF) from the California Attorney General found that the more guns that have been sold in California, the fewer gun deaths and injuries there have been. According to the office of the Attorney General, gun dealers sold nearly 600,000 guns last year, almost double the 350,000 sold in 2002, according to figures compiled by department officials.

While correlation doesn’t prove causation, this is yet another piece in a mountain of data indicating that gun ownership (including concealed and open-carry) leads to lower crime. The logic is straightforward: criminals are less likely to attack a target they think can defend itself. But Feinstein doesn’t care or even want to hear. (2) Don’t bother her with facts: she knows as an article of faith guns are bad and is determined to ban them, even if it leads to leaving good people defenseless.

For our own good, of course.

PS: If you’re interested in following a good Center-Right reporter and news site in California (we do have a few left), Katy Grimes in particular and Cal Watchdog in general should be on your list.

Footnotes:
(1) Kind of like progressives and economics, when you think about it.
(2) Kind of like the global-warming crowd and carbon dioxide, too.

Islamic leaders continue to portray the popular protests against President Morsi and his recently passed Sharia-heavy constitution as products of Egypt’s Christians. Recently, Muslim Brotherhood leader Safwat Hegazy said in an open rally, as captured on video:

“A message to the church of Egypt, from an Egyptian Muslim: I tell the church — by Allah, and again, by Allah — if you conspire and unite with the remnants [opposition] to bring Morsi down, that will be another matter…. our red line is the legitimacy of Dr. Muhammad Morsi. Whoever splashes water on it, we will splash blood on him.”

More recently, Dr. Wagdi Ghoneim — who earlier praised Allah for the death of the late Coptic Pope Shenouda, cursing him to hell and damnation on video — made another video, entitled, “A Notice and Warning to the Crusaders in Egypt,” a reference to the nation’s Copts, which he began by saying, “You are playing with fire in Egypt, I swear, the first people to be burned by the fire are you [Copts].” The video was made in the context of the Tahrir protests against Morsi: Islamic leaders, such as Hegazy and Ghoneim, seek to portray the Copts as dominant elements in those protests; according to them, no real Muslim would participate. Ghoneim even went on to say that most of the people at the protests were Copts, “and we know you hid your [wrist] crosses by lowering your sleeves.”

The heart of Ghoneim’s message was genocidal: “The day Egyptians — and I don’t even mean the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafis, regular Egyptians — feel that you are against them, you will be wiped off the face of the earth. I’m warning you now: do not play with fire!”

And to make that genocide even easier to carry out, he dehumanized them by comparing them to animals:

“Respect yourselves and live with us and we will protect you… Why?… because Allah has forbidden me to be cruel to animals. I’m not trying to compare you to animals … but if I am not cruel to animals or plants, shall I be cruel to a soul created by Allah? You are an infidel in Allah’s sight — and it is for him to judge you. However, when you live in my country, it is forbidden for me to be unjust to you — but that doesn’t mean we are equal. No, oh no.”

Ghoneim can weasel all he wants, but the idea is clearly planted. Copts are inferior, maybe even animals, and if they don’t act like good little dhimmis… If you noticed a resemblance to Germany in the 1930s, your mind wasn’t playing tricks on you.

The Coptic Christmas falls on January 7th this year. You can imagine what a merry season it is for them.

And speaking of Christmas, Islam’s birthplace (maybe…) demonstrated its dedication to tolerance for all by arresting 44 people who were engaged in a hideous plot.

In the latest kingdom-wide crackdown on those who would violate the national religious policy of Islam only, Saudi Vice and Virtue Police arrested 44 on charges of plotting to celebrate Christmas, as reported on Dec. 27, 2012 by the Beirut-based Al-Akhbar news portal.

The raid took place in the northwest province of al-Jawf, at the private residence of an individual identified only as “an Asian diplomat.”

The fiends… It’s a good thing the watchful officers of the Vice and Virtue police were on the job. Who knows what might have happened? They might have sung carols, exchanged good wishes and presents, said a prayer or two — someone might have had a good time!!

The last time the city reached the 500-homicide mark was in 2008, when the year ended with 512 killings. Last year, city records show Chicago had 435 homicides.

On Thursday, officials with the Chicago Police Department said the city was one homicide away from the 500 mark. Hours later, a 40-year-old man was fatally shot in the Austin neighborhood on the city’s West Side. Police say Nathaniel Jackson was found on the sidewalk outside a convenience store with a gunshot wound to the head late Thursday.

Jackson was asked to defend Chicago’s gun ban, given the staggering rates of gun violence in America’s cities compared to other areas that do not have such strict gun laws and experience less gun violence.

“I think about Newtown, for example, they have three or four gun ranges. There are no gun ranges in Chicago,” Jackson replied. “Newtown is so different than the complexity of the urban crisis.”

“40 percent unemployment does matter,” Jackson continued. “Lack of education does matter.” He said that gun crime and joblessness are inextricably linked.

Jackson was asked again, given Chicago’s gun violence in spite of its strict gun laws, how even stricter gun laws can be justified.

“The guns are not coming from Chicago,” Jackson replied. “Chicago is in a bubble as the manufacturer — we’re a target market for gun flow. And they exploit the poverty and the pain.”

“It’s not gun violence. It’s also poverty and lack of education and lack of dreams, where people think killing is the only way out,” Jackson concluded. “This is the need for an urban policy of reconstruction.”

Hmmm… Maybe the answer to Jackson’s “lack of dreams” isn’t to ban guns and set up a national “urban policy” (because the last one worked so well), but to allow people to defend those dreams and their lives. Failing that, perhaps the good people of Chicago should consider moving to Texas and leaving that gun-free paradise to its fate.

The results have not been what proponents of the act wanted. Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself.

Gun control in the UK was first instituted under the 1920 Firearms Act, not, as one might think, to control “gun violence,” but out of fear of Bolshevik revolution. In spite of successively more restrictive measures, culminating in the 1997 confiscation of handguns, crime in Britain has gotten worse since 1954. (And it hasn’t stopped.)

While many gun-control advocates are barely concealed statist gun-grabbers who spit on our natural right to self-defense, I’ve no doubt that many others are sincerely moved by the horror such incidents as Sandy Hook, Dunblane, or Port Arthur and want to do something, anything to never let it happen again. But legislating based on emotion rarely leads to good results, as the history of gun control shows.

As Dan Mitchell likes to say, “Bad government policy leads to more bad government policy.” If the previous gun-control law didn’t work the answer must be even-tighter regulations meant to discourage ownership, the inevitable destination of which is outright confiscation or its equivalent — “the Obamacare of gun control.”

And then we can all be just like Chicago.

Footnote:
(1) I have too much respect for genuinely good priests and ministers to grant that snake-oil salesman the title of “Reverend;” I don’t care what box of Cracker Jacks he found it in.

This is just outrageous. Four Americans died in Benghazi and the people held accountable for it in the official review whitewash, who supposedly were forced to resign, were instead just given a timeout:

The four officials supposedly out of jobs because of their blunders in the run-up to the deadly Benghazi terror attack remain on the State Department payroll — and will all be back to work soon, The Post has learned.

The highest-ranking official caught up in the scandal, Assistant Secretary of State Eric Boswell, has not “resigned” from government service, as officials said last week. He is just switching desks. And the other three are simply on administrative leave and are expected back.

The four were made out to be sacrificial lambs in the wake of a scathing report issued last week that found that the US compound in Benghazi, Libya, was left vulnerable to attack because of “grossly inadequate” security.

State Department leaders “didn’t come clean about Benghazi and now they’re not coming clean about these staff changes,” a source close to the situation told The Post., adding, the “public would be outraged over this.”

What a miserable farce. The entire Libya misadventure, from the initial, off-the-cuff decision of the president to loan out our Armed Forces in the service of a European agenda like some 18th-century monarch contracting out mercenaries to a royal cousin, down to the post-war security arrangement and rules of engagement — signed off on by Secretary Clinton herself! — was a pathetic, deadly joke.

And now, heaping insult upon injury, the people we were told were punished for the massacre at Benghazi turn out to not to have even received a slap on the wrist. No dismissals, no resignations, no demotions, no loss of pay — nothing but a “Wait a bit until the smoke clears, and then it’s back to normal.”

DiploPundit was right back on the 19th: this was a smokescreen to cover for political appointees. And you can bet it included Madame Secretary, herself.

The Diplomad, a now-retired Foreign Service Officer, thinks he has a pretty good idea what happened:

I will go out further on the limb. Once even the little dust created by the scandal has dissipated, the four bureaucrats asked to take the mini-spear for Chicago will–mark my words–get monetary awards. They will be written up for showing courage and fortitude under difficult circumstances. The senior people will evade all responsibility; ol’ whats-her-name will slip out of the building and leave her desk to John “Xmas in Cambodia” Kerry, the dead will be forgotten, the Islamist Morlocks will lick their fingers and get ready for another helping of Eloi.

Move along, there’s nothing to see here.

Nothing except a nauseatingly cynical game in which the real losers are the truth and the dead at Benghazi.